To recap Part I and Part II, we learned that reading scores on the NAEP tests have not improved significantly in 40 years and that any gains have been mainly due to raising the scores of the lowest percentile groups and minority subgroups. We learned that 17-year-olds made no statistical gains whatsoever. We learned that Whites have not seen a significant rise in scores and that Catholic school students outperform even the White subgroup of public schools. We learned that poverty rates do not and cannot explain the lack of proficiency in the United States in math and reading; not entirely and not primarily.

Next, I am going to present the Long Term NAEP results for math in the same format as I did in Part II for reading.

Math Results

Reminder: Clicking on the charts and graph will bring up a window where these items can be viewed in more detail.

These are similar trends as observed in the reading scores except that the scores in math started out higher and finished higher. Notably, the higher scores at the 9- and 13-year-old level do not carry over into the scores of 17-year-olds, just as they did not in reading.

As with reading, by the time 17-year-olds take the math test, only the lowest percentiles experience significant gains, and this is what the study chooses to highlight. However, the 9 and 13-year-olds realized higher gains in math at all percentiles than observed for reading. That is good but only speaking in relative terms.

As with the reading scores, the Hispanic score gap, though not shown, mirrors the trends observed in the Black gap trend. And, as with the reading scores, any math gains realized at the 17-year-old level were negligible in Whites and only 18 points in Blacks. Most of the gains across all age groups were made by Blacks and Hispanics. The one positive difference was that 9 and 13-year-old Whites improved their scores more in math than they did in reading.

When looking at the same data for reading, I compared the public vs. Catholic school scores to those delineated for each age group based on what grade the students were at in school. This data was not put into table format in the NCES report, but a search of the online database indicates the following:

Whereas the upper grade scores were lower than the Catholic school scores in the reading analysis, the upper grade math scores of all students (which includes Catholic students) is roughly equivalent to the Catholic school scores for 9- and 13-year-olds. The lower grade scores for math, like in the reading analysis, are roughly the same as what the Black subgroup scored in the 9 and 17-year-old studies, though Blacks still scored 10 points below the lower grade (7th grade) 13-year-olds.

These differences suggest to me that even relatively well-to-do white people cannot overcome Whole Language deficits, but being white greatly improves your chance of performing well (relative to other groups) in math at the younger ages. But as with the reading scores, being white will not help much to improve the math scores of 17-year-olds. Yet those Catholic school students, who also tend to be educated in more traditional ways, outscore public school students at 17 years old by 20 points and White students by 13 points. I suggest that any perceived “successes” in math at the lower grades has evolved because parents at the lower grades are putting in much more physical time working with their children to overcome the deficits in instruction and mastery at these age groups. Even so, this extra parent involvement does not mitigate the long term damage as demonstrated by lackluster 17-year-old scores.

This can’t just be poverty. It has to be instruction, curriculum, or some other outside influence or a combination of these factors. Catholic schools prepare students to achieve higher scores on these tests even while spending 32% less than public schools per student.

The following table is four years out-of-date, but still shows the relative cost of public school compared to Catholic and other private schools.

The most recent cost data for Catholic schools is below.

After considering the total number of students enrolled in elementary and secondary Catholic schools, the average cost per pupil in 2012 is $7,263 compared to $10,652 in public schools.

The following shows how well religious and independent school students perform on another test, the SAT, compared to their public school counterparts.

Religious-schooled students perform 82 points higher in critical reading, 27 points higher in math, and 45 points higher in writing than public-schooled students while spending less money. Those students in expensive independent schools score even higher, but their 70% higher costs only translate into 15% – 20% higher scores while religious schools score between 5% -18% higher. As you will recall, Catholic schools spend 30% less than public schools. The stripped down take-away is that however Catholic schools are teaching, both public schools and the expensive private schools should take a look at their education model. I also think that it becomes clear where money helps most above and beyond what is potentially curriculum – Math. The independent schools have a 45 point advantage over even the religious schools. This is likely due to expensive private tutoring on top of expensive instruction, because the critical reading and writing scores were not raised as significantly in the independently-schooled students. Obviously money matters in education. Bottom line, though, is that public schools will never have the resources of independent schools, so why not teach like Catholic schools while making the most of the 30% more funding public schools enjoy.

Now back to the NAEP data. I must admit the math results for public schools are somewhat confusing. There were a lot of gains in scores of the poorer minority groups since the 70s just as there were in the White subgroup at the 9 and 13-year-old levels even if the gains did not move the majority towards proficiency in either math or reading. It has been my belief that the progressive education system works best for those in higher socio-economic classes, so why the gains in what is presumably the lower socio-economic groups? It is possible that the progressive math curriculum has worked to move minorities over a crucial threshold, but then stalls, moving fewer students of all subgroups towards proficiency.

Whatever the reasons behind the incongruity between what is observed at the lower grades versus what is observed at the upper grades and even in college, it is obvious that we need to take a serious look at our math and reading curriculum (and probably science as well). I can say with a high degree of confidence that if the progressive curriculum is designed to make children think more critically, to the extent that it is being used in schools, it is not working very well meeting that objective.

Take the following questions released from the NAEP math test given to 17-year-olds in 2012:

Only one-third of 17-year-olds answered this question correctly. Let that sink in. Now consider that over half of the students chose the wrong answer “C”. Given the convoluted second suggested solution, I guess I can understand why students taught this way might make this mistake. Why not just teach kids how to solve for A? The correct answer MUST satisfy this truth: some number “A” divided by 40 equals 120, and that same number “A” divided by 80 must equal the number the student chooses as the answer; which on this test, the majority of students incorrectly chose as 240. There is no good way to check the reasonableness of the answer unless you know how to solve for A, and clearly the ½ trick backfired. Heck, whoever is preparing these kids to take a standardized test is not even doing a good job teaching to the test.

Here is another example of poor analytical skills.

Side note: Let me assure the reader that I DID NOT choose answer D as this screen capture suggests. I chose the correct answer E, but for whatever reason, the NCES site will not recognize the correct answer E no matter how many times it is chosen. Try it.

This is another one of those questions that should not be missed if students are checking their work. I understand why almost 20% chose answer “C” because they were thinking triangles (that was even my very first thought), but I was also taught to look at all the answers even if I think I know the correct one right away. And in doing so, I realized my hasty mental conclusion was not for a rectangle which has four 90 degree angles; four times 90 is 360 NOT 180. Granted, more of the students answered this one correctly than the previous question, but still, it is really easy and takes more common sense than it does math ability.

This next question blows my mind.

The progressive math curriculums I’ve seen all stress rounding to determine reasonableness. While I think the curriculum teaches rounding in a dangerous way, this particular problem practically screams for rounding to be employed. 56% is about 50% which is the same as one-half (that is some of the most basic math taught in 4th grade). So, half of 20 is close to 56% of 20. Half of 20 is 10 (at least 2nd grade math). Therefore, the ONLY answer that can satisfy this criteria is A. The other answers are not even tricky, they are just outrageously wrong. Only about ¾ of the students got it right and almost 20% said that 56% of 20 is GREATER than 20. OMG!!! Shouldn’t this have been a question that almost every student answered correctly?

The next question is another that you would expect every beginning Algebra student to understand.

The students did not even have to solve for “n” in this question if they forgot how. All they had to do was plug the multiple choice answers for “n” into the equation and see which one satisfied the limitations of the equation.

The next question is the only relatively difficult sample question in my opinion. Nonetheless, it is probably more difficult for an adult who has not had Geometry in over 30 years than a student who has recently completed a Geometry course.

I teased the formulas needed to solve this problem from my memory. To be fair, I do use the ½ base x height formula to compute land areas of triangular shaped parcels as part of my job, but I did have to remember a2 + b2 = c2. Drill and skill at its finest! Astonishingly, only 25% of students, most of them fresh out of Geometry (only 7% of students had NOT taken Geometry), answered this correctly. As far as Geometry questions go, this is not even a particularly difficult one except that it was not multiple choice. The solution actually required students to know how to compute an answer on their own. It was also the sample question on which the students performed the most poorly. This is not surprising given how today’s education philosophy puts so little value on practice and so much on group work and “theory”.

I want to add one final comparison that I think truly highlights the problems with our education system. Surprisingly, or maybe not, Asian Americans are not highlighted as a subgroup in the reports put out by the NCES. The data is there, just like it is for Blacks and Hispanics and Whites, but it is just…ignored. Let’s take a look at how Asian Americans perform. Reading first.

9-year-olds

13-year-olds

17-year-olds

Next, Math

9-year-olds

13-year-olds

17-year-olds

Asian Americans have higher scores at every age group in both reading and math. I do not believe that Asian Americans are inherently smarter than every other sub-group, rather the Asian American family makes education a priority. They also put less stress on the effort and more on the achievement. They value practice and mastery. They do not abide failure and they tend to limit their children’s extracurricular activities. In short, they are the perfect match for an education curriculum that expects mastery to occur at home and for parents to be the means to this end.

But even if I have over simplified the Asian American dynamic, if it was all about ethnicity or even wealth (Asian Americans have one of the highest income levels as a subgroup), we could expect Asian Americans to perform as well as Asians in other countries on the PISA tests, but that has not happened. They DO score higher than every other American subgroup on the international test, but they still score below other Asian nations, as can be seen in the following charts.

In conclusion, in light of the number of years educators and curriculum have had to raise test scores, the amount of money spent on education, and the number of years we have tread water in the status quo, very little progress has been made based on the NAEP Long Term test scores. While this alone might not be cause for concern, though I can hardly imagine why not, when these results are considered in light of students’ performance on international tests and their diminished preparedness for college, there is no mystery as to why parents, politicians, professors, and even many educators have reached the end of their patience. Anti-education reformers can waste all their time trying to convince the public that things are fine with anemic NAEP score gains and by pointing to poverty and high stakes testing, but they run the real risk of destroying the very institution they are trying to protect through their arrogance and condescension. If that sounds harsh, I am sorry, but I will not buy into the argument that U.S. education is fine outside of the inner-cities and could be miraculously cured if we throw more money at it. If that is to be your rhetoric, your position, your crutch, then we have very little to discuss and I pity the children being forced to learn in these institutions, especially disadvantaged children.

To recap Part 1, the Long Term Trend NAEP scores for Reading show no gains in the scores of 17-year-olds and nominal gains for 9- and 13-year-olds. The Main NAEP scores show that more than half the country is not proficient in Reading or Math. Poverty statistics from the Census do not explain why the lack of proficiency outstrips the poverty rate by over 40% if, in fact, poverty is the main reason students do not perform up to expectations.

Hopefully the reader is reading Part I and Part II together, because the background of the NAEP tests is explained in detail in Part !. If not, understand that the Long Term NAEP tests are those that have been given to students in the United States since the 70s, and they are designed to track progress over time since the tests are kept relatively the same.

Reading Scores Continued

When we left off, we saw that reading scores had not improved very much in 40 years, especially in 17-year-olds. Reminder: Clicking on the picture will open up a new box with an easier to read graph or chart.

Next, the 17-year-old scores are disseminated by percentiles.

This graph points to an even more disturbing trend in 17-year-old test scores; which is that the scores of students in the highest percentiles – 75th and 90th – have actually decreased to a level below that of the first test given back in 1971. But note how the red highlighted text box only points out the gains made in the scores of the lowest percentile groups; the 10th and 25th percentiles. This is the same myopic view I personally observed in my daughter’s public school: As long as the bottom is being brought up, and your child is average or above average, public education is considered successful. This does not bode well for the students who have historically been the most likely to attend college and to be leaders in science, math, government and business. I am not suggesting that you must go to college to be successful. There are a plethora of success stories that blow that generalization out of the water, but we are not talking about the outliers here. We are talking about an education system that should push every student to achieve to their highest ability not some watered-down average.

Presented next are data sets for the scores of Whites and Blacks. Note: I use Whites and Blacks because the tests refer to these subgroups as such.

The score gap for Whites and Hispanics was similar at this age level.

The score gap for Whites and Hispanics was similar at this age level.

The score gap for Whites and Hispanics was similar at this age level.

These data sets indicate that the gap between White and Black scores has narrowed significantly for all age groups. But what the red data bullets do not address is that this has been achieved primarily by raising the scores of Blacks (and Hispanics) NOT Whites. Whites’ scores rose 7%, 3%, and 1% compared to Black scores rising by 21%, 11%, and 13%. Curiously, the scores of Blacks, between 1988 and 1992, fell significantly before rising again, but that is a mystery to address another time.

Presented next is a comparison of Catholic school student and public school student scores against the scores of different grade subgroups within each age group. I will also refer the Catholic school scores back to the scores of Whites already presented.

I will also do this for the other two age groups, but before moving on, I want to make several points.

I suspected, before looking at this data, that children in lower grades would score lower than their same-aged counterparts in higher grades. This, in fact, did occur. It is interesting to note that the number of children in 3rd grade at 9 years old has increased significantly since the 1970s; from 24% to 37%. This trend is the same in the other age groups.

Given that 9-year-olds have increased reading scores despite the fact that more of them being tested have had a year less of reading instruction, one would (or could) expect that the reading scores would increase even more in later years. We will explore in the next two comparisons whether that actually happened.

But why did I include the Catholic school comparison? I wanted to analyze if the score gap between Catholic schools, which traditionally employ a more “classical” curriculum, and public schools would be erased if the children in the lower grades were eliminated (even though I presume that Catholic schools have a similar percentage of children in the lower grades for each age group as indicated for the entire data set). Why might this be important? Because if the scores were the same, or if the scores for all schools were higher than the Catholic school scores, then the conclusion that curriculum makes a significant difference might require a more critical look-see.

However, the Catholic school scores, which were not disseminated for differences in grade level, were still higher than those of all school students at the expected grade level for the age being tested. And remember, the national NAEP scores include the scores of the Catholic school students. In fact, these same Catholic school students, just 261 of them in 2012, would appear to have actually raised the national score by a full point for 9-year-olds. As the reader will note, the overall reading score for 9-year-olds is 221 but the disseminated data puts the public school score alone at just 220. Looking back at the score of White students in the previously presented graphs, which was 229 and also includes the higher scores of the White Catholic students, the public school scores still fall short of the Catholic school scores.

The score gap between Catholic schools and public schools widened from 11 to 16 points when comparing the testing of 9- and 13-year-olds. Moreover, the gap between the highest grade tested (8th grade) and the average Catholic school score increased from 2 points to 7 points. Another interesting observation is that those children in the 8th grade at 13 years old have only increased their scores by 5 points since the 70s while the kids at the lower grade (7th grade) have increased their score by 21 points. Again, this points to a system that brings up the bottom but fails to do the same for all students.

Given what I saw taking place in my daughter’s public school, the increasing percentage of older kids in lower grades is likely a result of parents purposefully holding their children back from entering Kindergarten. I saw this a lot. It was one of my biggest pet peeves, but my suspicion is that the trend is driven in large part by parents realizing that their children are not developmentally prepared to do the work expected of them in Kindergarten, not to mention First and Second grade, especially if they lie near the younger end of the age range set by individual states. Cynically, I suspect a lot of the motivation is parents trying to position their children for success, not only in academics, but in sports later on down the line (sigh).

In any event, none of this gerrymandering points to an inherent deficiency in the children, but rather, is in part a response to the advanced difficulty of the curriculum for elementary school students being perceived as expanding too far, too fast. While our kids are doing some very impressive things at the elementary school level (e.g., writing journals in Kindergarten), it comes at the price of actually learning to proficiency the skills needed to achieve at higher levels in later grades. I compare it to cramming for an appearance on Jeopardy. Yes, it is dramatic in the same way that parlor tricks can be dramatic, but does the amount of knowledge game show contestants cram into their brains result in long term gains that will help contestants be more successful in their careers or in their lives? Personally, I would like someone to explain to me why we decided that forcing more information on elementary school students without mastery of any of it was the way to achieve greater success in education.

Back to our regularly scheduled blog post.

By age 17, the score gap between Catholic and public schools increased from 16 to 23 points and the gap between the scores of 11th graders in all schools and the average 17-year-old in Catholic school widened to 16 points; remember it was 7 points in the 13-year-old age group.

The trend of same grade score changes is even more pronounced in the 17-year-old group. The 11th graders barely nudged their score from 291 in the 70s to 293 in 2012. The 12th graders actually saw their scores fall from 303 in the 70s to 291 in 2012. In the meantime, 10th graders saw their scores rise almost 30 points from 238 to 266. Again, it shows how our schools heap more on early at the expense of retention for the long term. In my own school district, I see two competing camps in this dance of trying to raise the scores of highschoolers. First, they adopt more academic requirements for the elementary school students thinking there will be long term benefits, but at the same time they withhold monetary resources that could improve elementary facilities. Instead, they spend the facilities improvement money in the high school and middle school (but mainly the high school).

This is why real people who control local taxes NEED to be educated about education. They have to stop listening to anti-reformers tell them everything is O.K. with education, especially at the elementary and middle school levels. Because the result of that rhetoric is that the average tax payer sees the 17-year-old scores and mistakenly thinks the problem is there in high school and that that is where the problem can be fixed and the money should be spent.

Some in the poverty camp have argued that if you took out the scores of lower income students, which make up a larger portion of the testing base today (i.e., Blacks and Hispanics), the average scores of students would be shown to have improved more than indicated by the current average. However, it should be noted that the average scores of Whites in each age group is almost exactly the same as the average score of the higher grade students while the Black students’ average scores are about the same as the average scores of those children in the lower grades. This suggests to me that being poor (assuming that the Black subgroup contains more poor students than the White subgroup) puts children about a year behind their peers. Further, I redirect the reader to the tables that show the actual paltry gains that Whites have made in reading in 40 years. Further, if you compare the Whites only scores (which also include the whites at Catholic schools) to Catholic school scores alone, Catholic schools still outperform public schools.

My personal belief is that Whole Language is the primary reason that children do not continue to make gains in reading after their initial “impressive” start. In an education environment that devalues – no, RIDICULES – learning by rote when it comes to math, Whole Language teaches reading in a way that is equivalent to flash cards (i.e., sight words). Sadly, in this case, memorizing a bunch of sight words does not prepare students to decipher the more complex words needed to increase vocabulary and develop excellent writing skills. I have devoted several blog posts that address my disappointment in Whole Language, so I will not revisit that in depth here, but if you are not familiar with Whole Language, I would suggest you do some research. Also, the NAEP surveys indicate that those students who say they read for fun almost every day score significantly higher than their peers, especially in the lower age groups. So, make sure your kids CAN read and ARE reading. I suggest it be excellent, challenging literature; not just the picture books that Whole Language uses to teach kids to guess words they do not know.

The current mantra of the anti-education reformers is poverty… poverty…poverty! I recently commented on a blog post which was taking to task a Chicago teacher for suggesting that poverty isn’t going away, thus focusing too much on poverty can potentially undermine the educational success of children who actually live in poverty. This, of course, is an unpopular viewpoint with the anti-education reformers. So, in an otherwise safe forum for fed-up teachers to lament about the Common Core, high-stakes testing, charter schools, Bill Gates, Michelle Rhee, uninvolved or too involved parents, politicians, and, of course, POVERTY, this teacher was attacked as being lazy (he had not read a book by the blog author) and an administrator wannabe (code for traitor).

While the teacher in question was calling for a more nuanced discussion that would acknowledge that the problems in education are NOT one-dimensional, the hue and cry from the poverty crowd was read the book…read the book…read the book! The teacher was wisely suggesting that poverty is out of the control of the teacher, so teachers should work to serve their students using the weapons in their arsenal; you know, focus on something over which you actually have control. The opposition, on the other hand, suggested he must not be a very good teacher (snark, snark, snark) because he had not…well…read the book. These condescending educators refuse to admit that their hostility toward any opinion different than theirs squashes legitimate, healthy debate; debate that could otherwise move the conversation forward and affect change in a positive way. It also alienates people like me. I’ve chosen to give up on public school for now. Possibly forever.

Having grown up with the educational deck stacked against me – a family with a history of alcohol and prescription drug abuse, a mother with mental health issues, and living in low income conditions – I know firsthand how important having high expectations of ALL students is for their success. Giving kids who come from poor and dysfunctional homes a pass, or having low expectations of them, is the absolute worst thing a teacher can do to those children. Children understand patronization and pity as well as adults even if they don’t know how to verbalize it. So, it was very refreshing to hear a teacher really going to bat for the at risk kids he was teaching and suggesting that teachers had tools to help them other than simply lobbying government to eliminate poverty. Our country started on this downward slide when its citizens learned how effective – in the short term – and easier it is to lament and lobby rather than roll up their sleeves and work hard. Sadly, Education leaders have followed the lead of Wall Street.

My personal theory is that current reading and math curriculum has a significant impact on how well children are learning for long term success regardless of income. Of course, poor curriculum negatively impacts low income children in a disproportionate way, especially if the objective is to raise their scores not just from their depressed levels in 1970 but to be equal to those scores of children in higher socio-economic groups today.

No one is denying that there is a link between poverty and standardized test scores within the United States (and within other countries), but that does not mean that poverty causes low test scores, at least not directly. Anti-reformers will not acknowledge that poverty levels do NOT explain the differences in testing scores between countries taking the same international benchmarking tests or why we have not significantly improved test scores within our own country even for privileged Whites after having spent so much money on education.

To put an even finer point on the matter, my theory is that the current curriculum used in many schools requires too much parent involvement outside of school, does not stress mastery, relies excessively on “group” work, and does not employ enough teacher directed instruction (O.K., those last two are just different sides of the same coin, but you get the picture). The end result is that all children are being shortchanged, especially those that do not receive help at home. I believe that the curriculum used in most public schools is only imitating success. If not for those parents who are spending several or more hours each night helping with homework, drilling on math facts, editing writing assignments, paying for outside tutoring, and the list goes on, I suspect scores would not have improved at all and might have even declined.

I know firsthand how much extra effort parents are putting into their children’s education. And it is not just because they know how important education is, though that is certainly a factor, but because they are being told by schools that it is part of their job. Parents who do not or cannot help after school are considered “part of the problem” with education. I think parents are between a rock and a hard place. To rebel is to undermine their child’s future. To go along is to spend all your limited free time teaching at home. Many, many parents are disturbed by this trend. They understand not just how poorly our students are performing on international tests (embarrassing) but also how dismally unprepared our high school graduates are for college. Even if we do not all agree on the reasons or the solutions, we understand that there is, in fact, a problem.

I have decided to look at my curriculum theory in light of what I observe through a close inspection of testing, specifically NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress) scores. These NAEP scores are the ones that anti-reformers like to focus on to suggest that public education in the United States is fine if you don’t consider the kids living in poverty. They conclude this because they focus on the fact that NAEP scores have been increasing steadily since the 70s. Of course, if you try and point to certain negative trends from these same tests, then the talking points change. Testing is bad and does not prove anything. As a matter of fact, many educators suggest that testing, in general, has no informative value whatsoever and is detrimental to learning because teachers are forced to teach to the test (this phrase deserves a blog post all its own). If there is one thing that the anti-reformers would be willing to let usurp the POVERTY alibi for poor student performance, it is the TESTING defense.

The truth is that NAEP scores for Math and Reading (the subjects most highlighted in this debate) have increased…for 9- and 13-year-olds. The other truth is that they have barely budged for 17-year-olds in over 30 years. This does not make sense when considering how much more money is spent on education today compared to the 1970s, how many more advanced and honor subjects are taught at the high school level, and how much more time, energy and money parents put into the education of their elementary and middle school children. My peers – children of the 70s – had no experience with their parents providing the crazy level of educational assistance they are expected to give to their own children today.

While the data from 17-year-old scores jives with what we are hearing from college professors (e.g., kids arriving at college not being able to succeed at basic math and with horrible or nonexistent writing skills), it does not explain how gains in the scores of 9- and 13-year-olds do not translate into increased scores of 17-year-olds or even an optimization in their college readiness. So, it really is important to look at the trends closely.

Before looking at actual test data, however, it is important to know that there are two NAEP studies conducted. One is the Main NAEP and the other is the Long Term Trend NAEP. The professionals at the National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES) tell us we should not compare Main NAEP scores year-to-year because the tests change (about every ten years), yet they go and break their own rule by seeming to do just that in their most recent (2013) report card…just sayin’.

The Long Term Trend NAEP for all three age groups tested (9, 13 and 17 years), the most recent of which was conducted in 2012, is designed to keep the tests the same as they were 30 years ago so that they presumably are measuring apples to apples. Another difference between the two tests is that the Long Term NAEP students are chosen by age rather than by grade level; the latter being how the Main NAEP participants are chosen. NCES says that some of the same questions that are on the Long Term tests today were there in the first tests. A third difference is that the Main NAEP delineates scores with proficiency levels while the Long Term NAEP does not.

Long Term Trend Results

Following are some of the important and/or interesting data sets from the 2012 Long Term Trend study. But first, graphs showing total recent participants and the current and historic percentage rates of test takers by ethnicity, grade level in school, and public versus private school are presented.

It surprises me how few students actually “count” in the Long Term Trend study. I assume that the numbers are low, because in order to be included on the Long Term study, participation at the schools must reach a threshold participation rate of 70%. This is purportedly to keep schools from only administering the test to those they think will perform the best. I suggest that 70% still leaves plenty of room for schools to cull the poorest performing students from the sample. Is it possible that the picture is even worse than the data shows? Just a thought.

This data is relevant to the extent that it can aid in explaining how each group can raise or lower their scores individually by more or less than the entire group changes its score together and what potential effect individual groups have on the whole group in general.

So, what say you, reader? Do the anti-reformers have a valid point that education is a success because of what we see in the graph above? Are you significantly impressed with the test score gains in the last 40 years? Are you blown over by the scores, themselves, which are out of a possible total score of 500 points? Is the largest score increase (9-year-old reading) of 13 points, or 6%, adequate? Is this educational triumph reflected in the scores of 17-year-olds, scores that are statistically the same as they were 41 years ago? Is any of this adequate given that over the ensuing years the amount per pupil spent on education has increased over 130% and PTOs and local educational foundations are kicking in even more cash that was not there in years past? These are all very good questions for the American public to ask themselves and those in charge.

FYI, the overall scores for 2012 include scores from Catholic schools and previous years’ scores include those from private schools that met the minimum participation rate in those testing years. This is kind of important for later.

So, what do these numbers really mean outside of their being printed on a page? Well, let’s take a look at reading scores on the Main NAEP in 2013 translated into proficiency rates and plotted on a map of the United States. Then we will move back to the Long Term Trend study.

Only thirty-four percent of students performed at or aboveProficientin reading in 2013 at both grades 4 and 8, with the percentages in the states ranging from 17 to 48 percent. Fifteen states/jurisdictions had higher percentages at or above Proficient than the nation at both grades 4 and 8, and 14 had lower percentages at both grades. (The Nation’s Report Card)

So, while the numbers have been increasing, the numbers say we are not proficient as a nation in reading. It is similar for math. Only forty-one percent are considered proficient at grade 4 and thirty-four percent at grade 8. Woo-Hoo! Yippee! Meanwhile, poverty rates in this country are not explaining these educational outcomes.

Yes, poverty rates have increased for children over the past 30 to 40 years from approximately 15% in 1970 to 21.8% in 2012, but poverty has increased for everyone else, too, except for the elderly. The latter are the ones who have really improved their position by digging out of 25% poverty in 1970 to 9.1% in 2012. Wow. Maybe the elderly would consider sharing some of their gains with the children.

Anyway, poverty does not explain why only 34% of students are proficient in reading. This is not compared to other nations, mind you, but is based on our own internal test that we have been giving for the past 30 to 40 years. According to the poverty chart, 78.2% of children are NOT living in poverty yet 66% of students (the majority of whom are NOT living in poverty) are NOT proficient in reading. Even if every single child living in poverty is in the group not performing at proficiency level, that still leaves 44.2% performing below proficiency for some reason OTHER THAN poverty; same for math.

I suppose I could have just ended this blog post here as I think it punches sufficient holes in the “It’s Poverty, Stupid” slogan, but I want to delve further in Part II.

Note: If you click on the pictures, you can enlarge and get a clearer view. Also, here is a link to the NCES site where the NAEP reports can be viewed or downloaded.

I brought my daughter home from the hospital on an unusually hot day in April of 2004. It was the best day of my life up to that point, or at least every other day dimmed in comparison. I had tried for seven years to have a baby, had been through three miscarriages, and was a year shy of my 40th birthday. I was not taking any chances with this little miracle.

Weeks before going to the hospital, I had fretted over the car seat, having spent several sweaty, back-breaking days trying to get that infernal contraption into the car the “proper” way over my enormous belly. My husband would have been happy to do it, but I knew he would not see all the dangers I did. The straps too loose. The angle too steep or not steep enough. I thought about taking the car to the police or fire station to have them do it, but they were men, too.

That car seat was replaced by a convertible booster seat from Eddie Bauer several years later. It remained in the car until sometime last year and the car upholstery has a permanent indention where the seat once was. My brother-in-law noticed it was gone the other day and voiced his surprise. So, you are getting the picture. I have a tendency to be an over-protective mom. Yes, many of my child’s friends had their seats taken out a year before, but my daughter had not hit the height requirement yet; so, you know, I was following the LAW!

I do not want anyone to be confused that I am a complete neurotic nut. I fight these tendencies to smother. My daughter takes gymnastics even though I hyperventilate from the sidelines. She plays softball in the midst of little girls getting broken fingers and whacked in the chest with balls. She rides a bike on gravel and has a nice scar to prove it. Just know that I am VERY observant when it comes to my daughter. I KNOW her. REALLY well.

I sent my daughter to her first day of Kindergarten on a warm, almost Fall day in 2009. You could smell the grapes wafting through the air from the nearby vineyards. We would be picking apples soon. Also in the air was that electrical excitement only experienced on “first” days and Christmas. Mixed with the nervous anticipation was my personal sadness. I was trusting my daughter’s teacher and the principal and the other professionals at her school to look out for my precious child. I lamented that this was a full day program; a half day would be less traumatic. I packed a lunch with a note inside with a smiley face and a heart drawn upon it. I made sure no tears smudged the ink. I prepared a great breakfast. My daughter’s backpack, which was bigger than she, was strapped securely to her tiny back. I cried. I did not care where the tears fell. I distractedly thought for a moment that I had not even owned a backpack until college and that got me thinking about that someday 13 or 14 years from then when I would be leaving her at college, and I cried more. Most moms do, right? Her teacher sent a note home with the parents explaining how she knew it was hard for us but that we should be reassured that she would take good care of our sons and daughters, and I cried even harder.

This is a good place to take a moment to make it perfectly clear that our reasons to homeschool had nothing, absolutely NOTHING, to do with the teachers, the principal, or the support staff at my daughter’s school. They were all wonderful and completely competent educators. We love them. We loved our school family. This is important to say, because some of what will follow will sound like I am blaming teachers. I am just trying to paint a picture. It is important because we are in this education thing together. We need to know what is common as well as what is uniquely problematic or positive.

The first time I started to get a sense that something was not quite right, or at least not what I had expected, was the Kindergarten journal. At first, you tend to think your child is a genius and you wonder how you missed it. She is writing whole paragraphs and pages and you can actually decipher most of it. Then you see the other children’s novels and you begin to think your daughter’s teacher is a genius and you should be nominating her for teacher-of-the-year.

I must admit that, despite my being pleasantly surprised at this new-found skill of my daughter’s, I could not completely enjoy it because I worried that I had been too lax in the pre-school years if they were expected to write journals in Kindergarten. What other things had I missed? Was this why so many parents had held their children back so that you had tiny four-year-olds and humongous six-year-olds in the same Kindergarten class? I had purposely not purchased any of those early reading programs or forced my daughter to learn the names of all the artists and poets and presidents at two-years-old. She had gone to pre-school at the YMCA where she learned to swim and write her letters and use scissors and glue and even learned Spanish and sign language; all in two hours and forty-five minutes three days a week.

But here they were in Kindergarten writing in journals when I was expecting them to be eating paste, learning to write their lower case letters properly, and learning a little phonics in preparation for First Grade when the good stuff kicked in.

Which leads me to the second thing that caused me to be concerned: A robust phonics system was NOT being taught. With such a focus on writing, the lack of phonics really stood out. Most of these kids’ written words were made up of consonants. The consonants represented all sounds. I was told not to worry, that this was normal development. My daughter started writing her letters and numbers backwards, something she had not done in two years of pre-school, and I was given handouts reassuring me that this, too, was normal. If it was normal, why did I have a sick feeling?

I kicked that fear to the curb, figuring that in First Grade they would really ramp up the phonics and the kids would start writing with vowels and would be taught to spell words properly. I knew that my daughter had a tendency to become ingrained in habits very easily and we might have a harder time breaking the habit to spell with consonants only, but we would cross that bridge in First Grade. Of course, if we were unsuccessful, we could move to Georgia (the country) where long strands of consonant clusters are the norm.

There were other non-academic things about Kindergarten that were problematic, like the fact that my daughter came home famished every day because a) she did not have time to eat her lunch in the effective 20 minutes to do so, and b) because they gave a snack at around 10:00 in the morning and served lunch at 11:15. When I picked my daughter up at 3:30, she had had very little to eat since the trail mix or popcorn at 10:00. As a consequence, lunches were either eaten in the car on the way home which meant we ate dinner at 8:00 in the evening or we had dinner early at 4:30. Either way, this one decision to feed snack in the morning rather than the afternoon , which was non-negotiable (I asked) because some people apparently sent their children to school without breakfast, resulted in the entire Kindergarten year being a disruption to our evening meals – and our family time.

On a warm day in June of 2005, my daughter graduated from Kindergarten. We bundled up art work and class projects, passed out thank you cards and gift cards for coffee, gave flowers to those teachers who we were not sure drank coffee, said tearful goodbyes to friends, teachers and parents and drove to the beach. Going straight home felt too sad. Even so, we were excited for summer and the lake and we were even looking forward to what next year would bring in First Grade.

This has been a very interesting year. I started this blog as a way to work through the viciousness I was seeing played out daily leading up to the 2012 Presidential election and which showed no sign of letting up even after the dust had cleared. Just really bad, awful, disturbing stuff. I was getting angry. You would not like me when I’m angry. I was fresh out of flannel shirts, so I needed a safe place to put that anger. A place devoid of green-skinned fury.

There is still a lot of hatefulness out there in politics, cathartic blogging notwithstanding. Personally, I’m just looking to make it through the next three-and a-half years and praying that both sides will choose to behave like adults the next time around. Sadly, there is absolutely no sign this will occur any time soon. The only things that bring us together are natural disasters, but even those have a short-lived dampening effect (and we’ve had more than our fair share of natural – and unnatural – disasters in the past year to try and get it right). The gloves are being unpacked from storage sooner and sooner; sometimes even before the last victim is buried, and well before the families have moved out of the initial stages of grieving. In fact, you have politicians hugging victims with one arm and punching with the other. Sigh.

In the midst of all this, I started homeschooling my now 9-year-old daughter. The reasons hardly seem very important now because it is difficult to be bitter when you are having such a great time. So why am I writing?

Because the Common Core and public education, in general, have become additional political walls that divide us. Also, the main opponent sects of the Common Core are, in all other respects, “enemies”. They are Wile E. Coyote and the Sheepdog after punching out for the night. You know they will be back duking it out in the morning, but for now, they are buds. That intrigues me.

I first heard about the Common Core last year when I started contemplating homeschooling. I was researching a variety of potential teaching resources. I went online and checked out our state standards (Michigan). They were not called the Common Core then, but GLE or something-or-other. Anyway, Michigan’s standards were coded with a bunch of hard-to-follow numbers and letters in tedious spreadsheet format. So, I looked at other states. I came across those for New York state. I read them (for 3rd and 4th grade) and I perused the sample questions and I thought, “Sounds good.” If I used those as a guide, I felt pretty confident that I would not miss anything important. Everything on the list seemed worth knowing. Silly me.

When you are homeschooling, there is the danger of drowning in curriculum choices. There are a lot of really good materials from textbooks, to workbooks, to videos, to iPad games. And that is just touching the surface. At some point, however, you must stop seeking and proceed to doing. Still, in the beginning, you keep glancing over your shoulder all the while thinking, “THAT one looks really awesome, too!” But you force yourself to face the way your feet are moving. FORWARD. Every now and then, however, if you are like me, you will revisit the Common Core to make sure you are hitting all the high points. But for the most part, you don’t think much about it. Because, again, if you are like me, you are too busy soaking up every last drop of the sheer joy of watching your child blossom in a world that is not filled with political undertones and overtones.

Meanwhile, as you are frolicking on your new-found educational playground, there is something developing like a thunderhead on the horizon. Something that could threaten to spoil your homeschooling party. How do you know this? Because some of those homeschooling sites you are following on line are trashing the Common Core. The low rumbling turns ominously into an F5 tornado. Striving to be heard over the deafening wind, you ask them what it has to do with them. After all, they aren’t in the public school system. They tell you – in that discernible condescending way that suggests you are “too trusting” – that the government (i.e., Obama – they will not call him President Obama because to them he is a devil) intends to use the Common Core to take away your right to homeschool – just wait. You scoff. Some people will believe anything and will work overtime to get other people to be just as worked up as they are because, sadly, most Americans would rather let someone else do their thinking. The internet has not made us smarter, by the way. It has just highlighted our intellectual laziness.

Anyway, this whole discussion brought the Common Core to the front of my education pile once again. As I said, I hadn’t thought much about it for eight months. Upon second blush, however, I discovered that there were a whole bunch of other folks outside the homeschooling community who were against it. Hmmm.

You have one group of folks hating it because they hate “Obama”. Those well-meaning citizens must really be extremely busy because they don’t have the two minutes it would take to research that President Obama had nothing to do with developing the Common Core. He just had the audacity to like it after the fact. Their main reason for disliking it is simply that anything President Obama endorses is evil and worth opposing as a matter of principle.

But what about the teachers? THAT was something I had not really expected. Not because I thought most teachers would be doing the WhooHoo dance because they had to learn/try something potentially new, but because many of the Common Core’s proponents were friendly to teachers or had been in the past. What was going on?

A lot of teachers seemed genuinely concerned that the Common Core was poised to kill the desire to learn. But the real pushback was related to the Core Aligned testing. To the best of my knowledge, if you take (actually, fightis a better word, as no one is just handing this tax money out) federal Race to the Top incentive dollars, you are apparently required to test; and that testing is used to benchmark both students AND teachers. Now THAT was something for the teachers to be concerned about.

Another underlying theme among those critical of the Common Core was the belief that supporters (the pejorative is “reformer”) are intent on completely dismantling public education in favor of for-profit, corporate-led charter schools. In other words, they believe that the Common Core was designed and pushed by a bunch of people and groups who know that there is no way to successfully implement the Common Core in reality. And part of their insidious plan is to then test the teachers, who they already know have been set up to fail, so they can fire them thus bringing down the hallowed walls of public education one brick at a time.

It is a murky mess out there. A lot of fear. A lot of anger. A lot of cynicism. And an extra helping of bitterness. Can you feel the seams giving way on your flannel shirt yet?

Next time: Before Homeschooling and the Common Core; How My Family Started the Move Toward Being Outside the System

I have been doing a lot of reading lately on education, the Common Core, schools (especially the curriculum taught in elementary schools), and the relationship and roles of parents and teachers in the education process.

If you think there is a war going on between Republicans and Democrats, just read some educational blogs. It really is reminiscent of the civil war which pitted brother against brother and father against son. It’s political, don’t get me wrong, but the sides are not clearly drawn and the allies on either side would be political enemies regarding almost anything else.

During the course of reading these blogs and articles, what started to become apparent to me is that when you strip away the politics, where one falls in these debates depends a great deal on WHERE you are from (city, country, somewhere in-between), whether you are an educator yourself or a parent, and what your personal experience has been at the school you teach in or the one your child has attended or is attending.

People with kids in low performing schools or who have children who are not thriving in the school they are in or who don’t like the curriculum want choices like charter schools. Many educational professionals think charter options undermine non-profit public schools and they believe it is part of a concerted effort by “capitalists” to do away with public education as we know it. The participants can be very dogmatic; think Young Earth Creationists vs The Fact of Evolution proponents.

With all this in mind, I would really like to get an idea from educators and from parents and even kids in the system (or recently out of it) what your experience has been. I specifically would like to know:

1) What type of curriculum was/is taught at your school. At the elementary school level, I would like to know if there were textbooks or if school work is from photocopied pages of a workbook you never see. Is phonics stressed or are sight words stressed? Are children writing, starting in Kindergarten, using “kid writing” or “invented spelling” and was “correct” spelling a priority. Are children taught to look at pictures and to read the whole sentence to help them guess unfamiliar words or are they taught to sound out words they are unfamiliar with?

2) Are the teaching methods employed resulting in kids sitting quietly in their seats for most of the 7 hours a day they are there and memorizing everything or is the classroom environment one where “learning centers” and techniques such as “Daily 5s” and “CAFÉ” are used?

3) Do the children learn math from manipulatives like unifix cubes and creative group work or are the standard algorithms stressed. Is Everyday Math (or something similar) the curriculum where you might see homework with lattices, and hear words like “spiraling”, and see many story problems? If you are the parent, can you help your child with their math homework or does it look unfamiliar to you?

4) Do kids spend a significant amount of time working in groups or by themselves at their desks or on the floor while the teacher is working with several kids in smaller groups separately? Or is most of the instruction of the type where the teacher stands at the front of the class and instructs from the white board or an Elmo (projection machine)?

5) Do the children have classwork that is graded and then returned by the teacher or is most of the work completed together in class with no grades? Does the teacher give quizzes and tests or is student progress measured mainly by assessments performed by the teacher several times during the course of the year?

6) Are the class sizes big (approaching 30) or are they small (20 or less)? Is there enough room in the class or do the children seem cramped once all the desks and extras are there?

7) Do the children learn everything in school or are the parents expected to participate to a large extent in the teaching/learning process at home?

8) Do you live in a big city or in the country or somewhere in between?

9) Do you work at or does your child attend private school, public school, a charter school (or something similar), or is your child homeschooled? If your child does not attend public school, why did you make the decision not to send him or her there?

10) What grade do you teach or what grade is your child in? If you are speaking from a past experience, what calendar year are you referencing?

11) Teachers, do you feel like you get enough constructive support from parents, and if not, what are your two top complaints? Parents, do you feel like your child’s teachers are/were supportive of your child and you, and if you were dissatisfied, what are your two top complaints?

12) Teachers and parents, do you like the curriculum taught at your school? If so, why and if not, why?

13) If there are students answering here, do you feel like your elementary school education prepared you for advanced work in high school and beyond?

These questions are not intended to be all-encompassing. If you think I left something out and it is important, tell me. Neither do I expect everyone to answer all these questions; perhaps some do not apply. Do not feel obligated to answer in bulleted form. Paragraphs are fine. Whatever you feel comfortable with works for me. I am just trying to generate some feedback.

I also realize that some of you may not be comfortable (for obvious reasons) answering these questions as yourself so I am fine with anonymous responses. Please, just be honest.